Birmingham-Southern College
BSC Baseball Players Savor Final Bus Ride as Panthers
Time flies but the Birmingham-Southern baseball team opted to take the bus.
A day after falling in its third game in the double elimination Division III College World Series, the Panthers hit the road rather than taking to the sky. They weren’t delaying the inevitable – returning to a college that closed Friday.
Instead, they were savoring every moment they had with one another.
“I don’t think I would have wanted it any other way,” said Jan Weisberg, BSC baseball coach the past 17 years. “We could have flown back, maybe cut a couple of hours off. Guys would have probably spent 95% of the time just a man to the right, a man on the left, not walking around, doing all the things that the guys do on the bus every year.”
The coach recalled past conversations with returning players about their favorite memories. Their most treasured recollections were of the time they spent with one another.
“They talked about the road trips. They talked about the bus trips,” he said. “I thought it was really good. It didn’t seem like 11 hours, to be honest with you. There’s a lot more movement going on and guys kind of shifted around and things like that. It was pretty cool.”
Junior first baseman Jackson Webster agreed. Despite enduring the uncertainty of the past two years and then the announcement that the school would indeed close, “there haven’t been very many frowns on this journey.”
“There’s a lot more smiles,” the Chelsea native said. “When you see the communities backing us up, the alumni. We’ve got parents and members of the school coming up to Ohio, 13 hours away, just to support us.
“It’s been nothing but fun for us,” Webster continued. “This group of guys is so tightknit that, I mean, it’s incredible. Even last (Sunday) night, after we lost, we got on the bus and it was probably one of the most fun bus rides we’ve ever had, everyone just cherishing the time they had with each other.”
The final bus ride from Eastlake, Ohio, was a jovial journey, Webster said, with everyone talking and having a good time, soaking in all the time they could together before going their separate ways.
“To kind of round this trip up,” he said, “it’s been a blast.”
The team arrived home about 10:40 Monday night. The bus pulled in behind Striplin Field on the BSC campus and the driver disembarked and started pulling luggage from the cargo bay. No supporters were allowed in to greet the players because the campus is closed. A crew filming for a documentary on the team’s postseason push got off to record them leaving the bus.
Sixth-year senior Jakob Zito missed likely being the last name called at the commencement ceremony last week. But he relished graduating with his brothers of the diamond.
“To graduate with those guys means a lot more than graduating and walking with all the others,” he said. “My teammates are my brothers; I’m with them every day. It was an experience I wouldn’t give up for anything else. A lot of people in my family are real upset that I didn’t get to walk at graduation. But if I could have done it again, I’d much rather play baseball.”
Webster said he has put off the process of finding a new place to enroll and continue his baseball career. Zito doesn’t know what he’ll do but hopes to stay in athletics.
Weisberg is uncertain of his future. Now is when coaching vacancies can be found as coaches are released from their positions or retire. The Panthers coach hopes to find someplace that fits for him, not where he’s just cashing a paycheck but where there is a unique opportunity to blend a good academic environment with a personal setting.
Can he find another BSC?
“There’ll never be another Birmingham-Southern,” he said emphatically. “No, I can’t, and neither can my players. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find a great situation. It doesn’t mean that we can’t be our best and do it in a different place.
“No, there will never be a place like Birmingham-Southern,” Weisberg said. “It is such a unique, it’s such a special place. But you can move out of a certain situation and just go make something very good of it. Our guys will be just fine.”